These types of seat arrangements in vehicles traditionally have a backrest, fastened to a seat part, on which a padded headrest is situated on the top side of the backrest that is used to protect the head of a user, for example during heavy braking or in the event of an accident. For fastening the headrest to the backrest, two holding rods which are inserted into cylindrical sleeves at the top side of the backrest are customarily fixed to the headrest. The holding rods may be moved in the sleeves by hand or motorized operation, for example, so that the height of the headrest may be adjusted.
To increase comfort, such a seat arrangement may additionally have a padded neck support which supports the neck of the user. For adapting the neck support to the user, the neck support has a movable design and is equipped with an adjustment mechanism which allows the neck support to be easily adjusted by the user.
A seat arrangement of this type is disclosed in EP 1 134 114 A2. In this document it is provided to situate a padded part, which has an adjustable inclination and an ergonomic shape that conforms to the contour of the back of the head and neck, on the front side of a height-adjustable headrest. To adapt the padded part to the particular user and adjust the inclination of the vehicle seat, the headrest has a pivot device with which the inclination of the padded part may be adjusted.
In that seat arrangement, it is disadvantageous that the padded part for the neck and head area has a one-piece design. As a result, the padded part continually rests against the neck of the user, and cannot be “folded back” independently of the head part.
A further generic seat arrangement is disclosed in EP 1 580 067 B1. In the cited document, it is provided to fix a padded neck support to a headrest of the seat arrangement via rotary arms. The rotary arms are each rotatably supported, on the side of the headrest, on a transverse shaft which extends through the headrest, and from there extend downwardly in the direction of the neck of the user. The padded neck support is situated between the rotary arms at their ends, and together with the rotary arms may be rotated from a storage position into different use positions, the neck support in the storage position being situated between the backrest and the headrest, thus forming a part of the head support surface. The rotation of the neck support takes place manually by the user. The entire assembly made up of the headrest and neck support is height-adjustably fixed to the backrest of the seat arrangement via holding rods.
A disadvantage of that approach is that the neck support and the headrest must each be individually actuated in order to adjust them.